Enough with all the events, say residents near Palmetto park

Palmetto’s crown jewel is losing its luster.

Sutton Park was meant to serve the community and attract major festivals into the city, but residents living around the park say those efforts have been too successful.

Intensity of use by not only major festivals, but from everyday use has been on the upswing. Grease stains from vendors dot the landscape, trash continues to be an issue and the park’s grass is struggling to survive as pockets of dirt begin to take over.

“I look out my bedroom and and all I see is so many dead areas in our park,” said Punkin Olmstead, who like many others around the park, was there long before there was a Sutton Park.

“It needs a break,” she said. “It needs time to refurbish.”

The city also is being criticized for allowing too much noise and alcohol sales at the growing number of festivals.

The city has been struggling to finalize a new noise ordinance, but Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant said events in the park must comply with the special function permits, which take priority over a potential ordinance. Bryant said while the city commission continues to discuss the ordinance, festival events at the park typically close down by 10 p.m.

“We are trying to get a noise ordinance in place and are running tests to achieve that goal,” Bryant said. “Events in the park are different with special function permits. I would encourage our citizens that if there are people in the park making too much noise to call the police so we have some data on when these occurrences are taking place. We want to make something palatable for everybody.”

Jessica Parrish certainly hopes so. A registered nurse who has to wake up at 3 a.m. for work, Parrish said she gets no sleep during festivals, even though she lives four blocks away.

“I should not have to hear everyone’s voices when I’m trying to sleep,” she said.

The city is bringing in a noise expert at a meeting in May to educate the commission on the way noise travels and how it can be mitigated. As the city also moves forward with planned improvements at Sutton Park, sound mitigation may come into play with a future design.

Gretchen Leclezio quoted the city’s own website, which says the city will, “strive to provide clean green spaces, and recreational facilities.” Leclezio said Sutton Park is no longer a green space and criticized city officials for making it worse by allowing the sale of beer and alcohol at festivals.

“What we are doing is turning our green park into a brown park,” said Leclezio. “This has been the last five weekends. When do people that live around the park get a break?”

Leclezio and others asked the city to consider limiting the number of festivals and events at Sutton Park. Commissioner Brian Williams agreed.

“But what is the number? Is it one or two a month? It’s the appropriate number that we need to find out,” he said.

In the midst of the complaints about alcohol sales, Palmetto Rotary Club’s David Bailey asked the city to reconsider an April 4 decision to not allow beer sales at the Fourth of July Festival. Bailey said any notion the city was profiting from beer sales, as stated by Commissioner Tambra Varnadore, is false.

“The city is not profiting from beer sales, it’s profiting from renting us the space,” Bailey said. “One hundred percent of the proceeds goes back to the kids in Palmetto. If we don’t do it, people will bring it anyway. I would appeal to the city to bring it back up and support us to do what we do in the city.”

No such support came, but the city commission would have to act as the Community Redevelopment Agency, which was not scheduled on Monday.

This story was originally published April 18, 2017 at 1:41 PM with the headline "Enough with all the events, say residents near Palmetto park."